Sony Pictures took to the CinemaCon panel to announce its latest project set in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, El Muerto. According to Variety, the film will star Grammy Award-winning rapper Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, known worldwide by his stage name Bad Bunny, in the lead role. El Muerto would be the first film featuring a Marvel Comics character to be headed by a Latin actor. The studio said it will eye for a tentative January 2024 release for El Muerto.

El Muerto is the superhero name for the character Juan Carlos Sanchez. Sanchez is a professional wrestler handed down superpowers from his ancestors, drawn from a mask he wears. While Sanchez is reluctant to follow the path of his family’s legacy, his father’s death set him on a different course. The superhero wrestler has fought in the ring with Spider-Man in the comics and has even come to the web-crawler’s aid, says Marvel.com.

Just like other films set in the SSU, El Muerto will also portray the Spider-Man rival as an anti-hero on a journey to fight and eventually embrace the conflict that comes with his unwanted powers. While the news is exciting, it’s also a surprise from Sony as El Muerto is a lesser-known character from the Marvel Comics, having only appeared in two issues. But, with Bad Bunny, who himself is also a professional wrestler (making him a perfect fit for the role), Sony can turn a viable and entertaining anti-hero film for the SSU. In a statement at the panel for El Muerto, Bad Bunny said:

I love wrestling and now I'm a wrestler. It's the perfect role. It will be epic.

Sony Sony's Spider-Man Universe Continues to Grow

With El Muerto, the panel also announced a few more projects in the works at the studio, all set within the SSU. Firstly, the studio confirmed that Venom 3 is in development, along with statements on Madame Web, Sony’s first female-led Marvel movie (starring Dakota Johnson), as well as details on the ongoing production of Kraven The Hunter (starring Aaron-Taylor Johnson). Sony also gave updates on the Spider-Man: Across The Spiderverse, a two-part cinematic experience, which was later pushed to a delayed release in 2023 for Part I and 2024 for Part II. The studio reportedly played the opening of the film exclusively for the audience and also revealed the title for the third Spiderverse film, i.e., Spider-Man: Beyond the Spiderverse.

Sony’s deal with Marvel Studios has turned out into a successful franchise of Spider-Man films set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The franchise starring Tom Holland comprises a standalone trilogy based on the character and three more appearances for Spider-Man set in the MCU. Recently, with Spider-Man: No Way Home, Sony, and Marvel worked together to interlink all previous and the current Spider-Man films through the concept of the multiverse. The film became the highest-grossing film for the studio and is being called the best Spider-Man movie.

From that deal has spun Sony’s Spider-Man Universe, which started off with the 2018 film Venom, a revitalized project that was supposed to be spun out of The Amazing Spider-Man Series. The franchise’s latest release, Morbius took a bad commercial and critical hit, but the studio is actively developing more projects based on characters associated with Spider-Man in the comics. Sony’s other films in the SSU slate include standalone projects featuring characters Black Cat, Spider-Woman, Nightwatch, Jackpot, and Sinister Six. A series featuring Silk is also in development.

El Muerto would release as the sixth film in the SSU. The project came to light after Bad Bunny’s performance in Brad Pitt-starrer Bullet Train impressed Sony execs. Earlier, the studio had planned to take Bad Bunny on a different high-profile project but settled for a minor character from the comics. With Bad Bunny’s name attached to it now, the character of El Muerto is likely to gain traction from fans and the actor has both the responsibility and an opportunity to turn this lesser-known character from the comics into a sensational anti-hero.

After all, a superhuman with wrestling skills calls for some epic action grandeur; throw Spider-Man in the ring. It’s a blockbuster!